anothergol

hi, It's strictly for private use, so not many at all, like less than 5. (which pretty much forbids any of the part-printing services out there) However, I'm assuming that the preparation/overhead for printing decal sheets isn't the same as the one to print parts, & that it would be ok to ask a service to print 10 *different* decal sheets, am I wrong?

For me B&P is quite cheap, though. It's not even 2eur, which would be the shipping price from my own country, I wouldn't find cheaper on BrickLink. In fact, PaB from my own country costs 5eur shipping, that makes no sense. It's normally shipped from Denmark so I don't know how they do it. Well, I've BLed something in Finland the other day and it was under 2eur as well, but it had to be under 50g for that.

"Sometimes bricks cannot be donated." I'd like to know why. If there is no charity close enough to fetch them, there's certainly a BL seller to sell them to for cheap, which would certainly be better than recycling something that's still perfectly usable (unless the parts are all broken of course, but I can't see how that would happen), which has a cost too, & won't replace the energy that was spent to produce the parts in the first place. But hey, large shops trash tons of good stuff every day, pretty sure many Lego sets have been "compacted" not by Lego directly :( It's also a Lego-specific thing that parts can be recycled by reusing them for MOCs, you can't say the same about a normal toy having a broken part.

Update: Version 4.5 of the one that started in this thread http://www.eurobrick...pic=112171&st=0

But they did update the inventory, and they weren't magically busy until exactly february first. Pretty sure there's a marketing reason behind everything that's not available.

I've just placed an order, it seems even more broken than it used to be :( While I knew I'd lose my order as everyone (but still took screen captures), and made sure to first place a dummy order so that the second works, the second didn't work, and it got worse as I couldn't even remove anything from my shopping cart until I reopened my browser. Anyway, I'm disappointed that Bricks&Pieces, even closed, wasn't at least browsable until now. Because there are parts I could have gotten in some past BrickLink orders that I didn't order enough because I thought I'd get them later in B&P. And it's not like I was hunting for licensed minifig parts here, I was expecting parts like these available.. It's not like Lego has to protect THAT kind of piece that's designed to be widespread.. I had made a list of all the new interesting parts, looks like the shop offers ZERO of them :(

yeah, the trick is to place a dummy order first, then go back & place your real one. It seems to bug for everyone.

Is looks amazing, but one problem I see is that Technic panels all show ugly sprue marks & are to be covered by stickers. So if it ends up all black, it's gonna be chockful of sprue marks, no?

I don't wanna waste your time, I'd rather wait until I find a way to get anything printed. For some strange reason it seems much easier to find a service to print tiles directly (but at a high price), rather than decals.

Thanks, but that's with the physical side that I have problems too. I should be able to design the decals, but not print them :( This said, if you enjoy designing decals, help is still welcome. I've highlighted the critical ones in red, & the one that may improve it in green. Of course, it'd all be Lego-illustration-style. I'll be using Lego's own printed AT-ST round tiles in the back. Important: -the side dishes would really look better with the inside pattern. Actually, there's a lego part looking a bit like it, but it doesn't really work in practice -the top hatch, although the sprue mark might be a problem with a waterslide decal (but not with a classic transparent sticker) -the back has 4 vents at the top, twice the same decal on the 2 hinges -the body's sides has little dots (5 of them, but I'd do 3 as the slopes are small) Optional: -the "real" one has some little dots on side plates at the top (not the same on both sides), not very important, and not exactly where the 2x2 tiles are -the front could use a blast mark, like I've seen on some painted Bandai kits -the leg dishes have their own pattern too, even though it'd probably be hard to apply a decal to the larger dishes -the back has 2 specific vents that could be on a 2x4 tile instead of what's there (I tried to put a tile to split the vents in 2, but it doesn't look great) -(even the interior could use detail decals as well) So there's nothing very artistic, it's mostly geometrical stuff.

ah, that makes sense, however normally the real problem should be the balancing on the feet's ball joints. It would be a bit weird that shaking the table would make it fall due to the feet, -normally- it should fall over from the joints themselves. But for that I have no solution except a display stand (or glue). Edit: for the one with the walking pose, I can imagine that pinning it does make it very stable indeed.

I'd say its main value is mainly linked to its rarity. In a post-apocalyptic world where past money is worthless, I'd rather have gold than Lego, & those who will want it from me won't plan to "use" it :), it's like the universal money. I think Lego is a safe bet when bought during sales, because I can't imagine selling an(y) old set for less than its original street price, so it needs to start with a little headroom. But selling an old set for 10x its price.. I think those days are over - too many collectors now.

Looking neat! And in scale with the AT-AT. I see you've elevated the foot's joint, but in reality it was already slightly higher than it should have been. I'd use Bandai's recent version for any reference, it's really a great kit (& amazing version here below). I'm looking for help for custom waterslide decals for version 2 btw.

Really, for every ultralarge MOC like this, there are 100 crap MOCs designed by 6 year old kids. Those are what's polluting Lego Ideas, not this. I'm not voting for it because I wouldn't buy one (at that price, I'd want it fully studless and semi-motorized), but I like to see those on the website.

It's good that the LDD is a bit loose, because it would, as a result of tiny offsets due to its inaccuracies, reject many connections that would normally work well. Really, with studs I wouldn't try to do what you want to do, but with technic parts you can always join stuff by not fully inserting axles. Or try your luck & bend axles, they won't break (maybe beams will), but studded parts will.

It's nice but even though you're right that there is a market for expensive collectibles (I own a 6000eur lifesize T-800 myself, & SideShow has released a 5000eur R2D2), I'm afraid there is less than zero chance that Lego would ever do this. Personally, I wouldn't buy it, but I'm not exactly a SW fan enough for that.

I don't think there's any tolerance, but there are parts that allow to join what shouldn't be joined, mostly the rubber stuff: I'm not an expert in Technic sets, but it's possible that Lego designers allow themselves more freedom there, because Technic builds can bend a lot. With studs, it's normally zero tolerance. And yes as you found out, better not trust the LDD for that.

You make it sound like VAT is applied multiple times, but you do know that a company buying stuff deducts the VAT, so only the final one applies to the consumer. I don't see how this has a cost, the company deducts all of this from their taxes at the end of the year. More papers to track I guess, but no big deal. and yet I'm still buying most of my toys outside, because even after everything applied, it's still cheaper (because the internet, & because my country's market for toys isn't big enough) no, it's charged once, but with the VAT of my country. If I buy from Amazon germany, I'm not taxed 19% but 21%. It's more common when you buy software, but with amazon it's on anything. Also, & maybe related, if I buy 3 items from Amazon germany, it's possible that all 3 will be sent separately from 3 different countries (& Amazon still manages to ship for free, weirdly)

IMHO they made a bad choice with those 2 big buildings (which I've collected, though). The Simpsons was perfect for a lot of small vignette sets. The Simpsons is all about the characters (they covered, really well) and the situations (they did not cover at all). It's not about the buildings, besides they did the 2 most boring prefabs out there. Both the Simpsons's house & Kwik-E-Mart are ugly common buildings by design. I really wanted to revive scenes from the show. Characters should have been introduced in small sets.

I think it's a name & just that. What else should have Lego named it? & I still think that, for Lego, it's not about ideas nor creations, it's about advertisement. They encourage you to blog your stuff everywhere. Lego on Ellen Degeneres, minifigs in the hands of Gillian Anderson & David Duchovny, isn't that worth more to Lego than a few sets sold to a few adults in their own store? yeah right, as if "the idea" was really to pick the DeLorean & anything can work as a Lego set I've voted for senteosan's dinosaurs btw. I can only -hope- that it doesn't mean that "I wanna buy a Lego dinosaur"! I wanna buy HIS creation, and feel free to poll everyone who has voted for him, they all wanna buy HIS dinosaur. There are dozens of crap dinosaurs on Lego Ideas, I'd like to know why none of them got more than 100 votes, while this particular one got its 10k easily, if it's NOT because it's a great creation. Not every project was remade like the Exo-suit, simply because builders can, if they want to, accomodate to Lego's rules. The Exo-suit wasn't designed to be a Lego Ideas project, hence the problems with it.

Many times I've been willing to design my custom decals (more for parts than minifigs, but it doesn't really matter), and find a service to print them, but I've only found a few sources for that (mostly private owners of ALPS printers), but nothing that looked "serious" (except one, maybe). These would be my requirements, & probably what every customizer is looking for: -transparency, on dark parts (thus not everyone's home-printed white stickers) -limited colors/passes is ok, full-color isn't a requirement for Lego stuff that has more to do with illustration than photo -preferably water-slide, always better than thick stickers, and easier to align -pre-cut certainly a bonus, if done correctly (misaligned pre-cuts can ruin a sheet, besides water-slide decals don't require too precise manual cutting) -(of course custom printing of parts is better, but I can't imagine that cheap enough) So if anyone has heard of good online services that do this.. (sorry if there's a similar thread, couldn't find any)

But that's exactly what I'm critisizing. I don't go to Lego Ideas to vote for ideas. This wasn't even an "idea" - everyone can pick a random movie/show, make a crap MOC around it and bam, people should vote for it, because they aren't voting for the design but rather the "idea", thus the movie itself? Really, when I vote I do it for the design, and IMHO Lego should respect it, and only fix illegal connections & make it follow their rules. I do fully understand why they redesigned the exo-suit, and luckily it ended up good. There are 3 Magnum P.I. projects on LI, here again, not an idea at all. But I've voted for this one, because the Ferrari is damn cool (even if it's a lot because of the stickers): https://ideas.lego.com/projects/114636 Sure, it has no chance to pass, but if it did and Lego came up with another monstruosity because "it's all about the license/minifig", I wouldn't buy it.

An interesting article here, about the scale of a minifig: http://tomalphin.com/2013/11/lego-challenge-19-calculating-minifig-scale.html The guy adjusted the minifig to be anatomically correct, and I believe he's right. As I wrote in a previous post, Bandai's AT-ST kit is 1/48, and it's very clear that it's not minifig-scaled, while if you only take into account the height of a minifig, it should be. He concludes that the real minifig scale would be 1/29, and I've computed my AT-ST as 1/28, which is cool. For the AT-AT, that would translate to 80cm tall, I believe.

Come on, the "good" one doesn't look like a 3000+ parts project, sure it'd have costed more than 100, but less than 200 I'm sure. I can only imagine one reason this ugly thing sold, the minifigs (which is the only thing that Lego improved here). IMHO it's one of the ugliest things that Lego produced, any basic minifig-scaled car in the most basic set, at least looks like a car. & be honest, if you bought it, it's purely for the license. Had this been a Lego City set, you'd have laughed at it. Meanwhile the original one looked "ok" But still, there is a ton of DeLorean MOCs out there, I can't find any that looks worse than what Lego dared to release. They all have a proper hood.

They have parts in their inventory that were created by Lego. IF Lego wanted to get them in trouble, they certainly could. But it's not a company's best interest to sue the world.